Andy Kehler visits one of the cellars at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Jan. 16. Cheese experts say the farm is probably the only operation of its kind in the U.S. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff Writer

Cheddar cheese ages in one of the cellars at Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro on Thursday, January 16, 2014. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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GREENSBORO — There are more milking cows than people at Jasper Hill Farm, but not by a lot: 45 Ayrshires to 43 employees. Throw in the co-owners, brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler, and the score is even.

These 90 organisms and the countless microorganisms in their midst work together to make cheese. It’s a winning combination, as another number makes plain: Two.

In its 10 years as a farmstead cheesemaker, Jasper Hill has produced two “best of” awards from the American Cheese Society at its annual conference and competition. The most recent victory came in August, when a rich, runny and smelly cheese called Winnimere took top honors at the event in Madison, Wis.

This was a surprise and a joy for the Jasper Hill cheesemakers, who say Winnimere is the “heart and soul” of the business.

With a day left at the cheese festival after the win was announced last August, and only one piece of Winnimere in Wisconsin, a couple of Jasper Hill employees hopped in their car and drove to Madison. They carried a couple of boxes of Winnimere to celebrate the win.

“Something like that isn’t something that you ever expect to win,” said Scott Harbour, 28, operations manager at Jasper Hill Farm. “I suppose some people do, but not normal people.”

A laboratory at the Cellars at Jasper Hill, an aging cave across the road from the farm, is identifying and analyzing the microbial population of the cheeses in an effort to map the Jasper Hill genome. No similar scientific inquiry is targeting the human DNA at the Greensboro barn, to determine if its people are “normal.”

Their operation, however, is unusual.

It is probable that Jasper Hill Farm and its associated cheese cellar is the only operation of its kind in the United States, according to a couple of cheese experts. (The Kehlers think so, too. “We’re the first,” Mateo Kehler said.)

On their farm in Greensboro, the Kehlers milk cows and make cheese — including raw-milk cheeses — in a cheese-making room attached to the barn. They also use milk from neighboring farms to make cheese, some of which is produced at the Food Venture Center in Hardwick.

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In the seven-vault, multi-million dollar cheese cave, the Kehlers and their team age, market and distribute cheeses made by other Vermont cheesemakers and one from New Hampshire. A cheese aged at Jasper Hill and made by Cabot, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, is the other Jasper Hill product that won best of show (2006).

“In the United States they’ve come up with something that’s really unique and what I think is really fun,” said Catherine Donnelly, a food microbiologist who is a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont.

She brings visiting European cheesemakers to Jasper Hill, and says they are “heartened” and excited by the Greensboro enterprise. Donnelly is co-director of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese and author of a forthcoming book, “Cheese and Microbes.”

Donnelly's research lab collaborates with Jasper Hill on projects related to milk quality and cheese safety, she said by email. In addition, the inn she owns with her husband in Greensboro, Lakeview Inn, is the site of food/cheese events in the Kingdom, and a place where Jasper Hill interns stay.

“They’re incredibly collaborative,” Donnelly said of the Kehlers. “They’re helping everybody in the industry learn, and they have a great willingness to share this incredibly technical knowledge that’s expensive to access. They’ve achieved success because they’ve been collaborative, and I think people really admire them for that.”

Their business approach and interest, which calls for replicating Jasper Hill at other Greensboro farms, is also distinct.

Cheese for community

“For us, cheese has always been a vehicle to achieve this other thing,” Mateo Kehler, 44, said. “A vibrant community that’s not completely dependent on globalization. This is our response to globalization: We have the opportunity to extract wealth and redistribute it in our community in a different way.”

Jasper Hill sells $8 million of cheese annually, Kehler said. Winnimere is a seasonal cheese made when the cows move off pasture and come inside, where they eat dry hay. This diet produces a richer milk suitable for Winnimere, a raw-milk cheese that is aged 60 days, as federal regulation requires of raw-milk cheeses.

Winnimere is made at the Greensboro farm with Ayrshire milk, which on certain production days goes directly from the pipeline in the barn to the fermenting tank. After rennett is added the milk coagulates before your eyes, a fascinating process that is monitored closely and timed precisely.

It is formed and washed in a salt brine, and wrapped in spruce cambium, an inner membrane of bark, from trees harvested on the farm. By day 3, the cheese goes to the caves for “ripening and fretting,” Kehler said.

Winnimere has a strong and wild aroma, a rich flavor and variable taste — some batches are fruity, others taste more like ham and onion. The best way to eat it is to scoop it from its bark wrap, using a chunk of baguette, a cracker or your finger for a spoon.

Yet when its big moment came — best cheese in America chosen from 1,794 entrants — Winnimere wasn’t available. It’s a winter cheese whose production starts in November. Because it ages 60 days, Winnimere is in stores in early January. This is a strategic time for cheese, as sales typically drop off after the holidays, according to cheese makers and sellers.

It’s the right time for a special cheese, one that is presented almost as a small gift, wrapped as it is in spruce cambium, said Steven Millard, director of merchandising at Murray’s Cheese Shop in Greenwich Village.

If Murray’s could get more Winnimere, they could sell more, Millard said.

“We go up there often,” he said. “We have a really tight relationship with them. They’re great to work with.”

Murray’s people travel to Greensboro every few months to hand-select 35-pound wheels of Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. This one-time championship cheese is made by Cabot from the milk of single herd in Peacham, Kehler said. It is aged at the Cellars at Jasper Hill and was first place winner at the American Cheese Society in its category last summer. (Willoughby, a Jasper Hill cheese, also won a blue ribbon.)

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“Had it not been for Winnimere, it might’ve gotten best in show,” Millad said of Caboth Clothbound Cheddar.

He recalled that on his first trip to Jasper Hill, the cellars hadn’t yet been built.

“Mateo got out blue prints and said this is what we’re doing,” Millard said. “It was awe-inspiring to look at the hill and try to imagine a cellar there. It’s pretty remarkable; they’re producing really consistently great products.”

Last May, Jasper Hill made a batch of Winnimere to enter in the American Cheese Society contest. Winnimere won the blue ribbon in its category, farmstead cheese — beating second place Landaff, aged at Jasper Hill — to advance to the all-round competition.

Kehler, smiled and shrugged when I asked him to explain the variability of Winnimere’s flavor. As much as he likes the wondrous element of cheesemaking, he’s interested in the science.

By investigating the genetics of their milk and cheese, the Kehlers hope to gain an understanding of the particular characteristics of their cheeses.

“It gives visibility into parts of the cheesemaking process that have been opaque,” he said. “It’s like God: these organisms are unleashing life but we’ve never had a good idea of what was happening at the microbial level. The barn, the cellar, us, this is an ecosystem.’’

Identifying the “interesting and indigenous” microbes that exist at Jasper Hill could be useful in replicating and controlling the bacterial cultures that are used in the fermentation process, Kehler said.

This work is an example of a project that is likely unique to Jasper Hill, Donnelly, of Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese, said.

“For an individual cheesemaker to be that intellectually curious, to employ the best science to learn what comprises the flora of their cheeses, it’s just remarkable,” she said.

Winnimere is named for the family camp on Caspian Lake where the Kehlers spent childhood summers, a home that has been in their mother’s family since the 1930s. The Kehlers were born in Bogota, Columbia, where their father ran a cut-flower business. They lived in Bogota until the boys were in middle school, when the family moved to Woodstock.

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The brothers bought the Greensboro farm in 1998, and built the cheese-making facility with their own hands. They started the construction project in November 2002.

The building stands solid despite a floor that is one concrete load short. Deer-hunting season started when the concrete was being poured, Andy Kehler, 42, recalled. The concrete guys one day didn’t show up; the Kehlers proceeded with construction and started making cheese in the spring of 2003.

Mateo Kehler, who calls himself a “late bloomer,” went to college the years between buying the farm and starting the business. At Friends World College, Mateo Kehler studied economic and community development with an interest in micro-financing. His work was focused on these issues in south Asia and central America.

Now Mateo Kehler is thinking about these things in relation to cows and cheese in a Northeast Kingdom village. With a business plan that looks ahead to 2025, Jasper Hill can support cheesemaking from the milk of 800 cows, Mateo Kehler said. Production capacity is the “bottle neck,” he said.

“We have an opportunity to take a cheese out of here and plunk it down on a dairy farm in our community to make the farm economically viable,” Mateo Kehler said.

After making a batch of cheese one recent morning, Mateo Kehler turned on his computer and looked at plots of land on state maps. The green Greensboro acreage, which he wants to keep green, are places Jasper Hill envisions milking cows and making cheese.

A “magical” project in the planning phase would bring cows and other living things to the heart of the village, Mateo Kehler said.

“Visioning is a big part of our culture,” he said. “It’s not looking back, it’s looking forward.”